Games Beaten 2018

[MrPopo]

Phantasy Star employs a first person perspective that completely revolutionizes the immersion of dungeon crawling and is, as far as my experience goes, completely unique for RPGs of the era.

Akallabeth, Ultima 1-5, a large number of Ultima clones, and then the games that were first person all the time, like Wizardry and Might & Magic.

You should be thanking me for giving you so many good suggestions of games to play.

[nullPointer]

The List So Far:

1. To the Moon [PC/Steam]
2. Super Mario All-Stars: Super Mario Bros. 3 [SNES]
3. The Goonies [Famicom] [Together Retro - 01/2018]
4. Disney's Kim Possible: Revenge of Monkey Fist [GBA] [Together Retro - 01/2018]
5. The Addams Family [SNES] [Together Retro - 01/2018]
6. The Adventures of Batman & Robin [SNES] [Together Retro - 01/2018]
7. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy: Justice for All [3DS]
8. Mickey Mousecapade [NES] [Together Retro - 01/2018]
9. Assassin's Creed II: Discovery [NDS]
10. Half-Life: Source [PC/Steam]
11. The Great Giana Sisters [Amiga] [Together Retro - 03/2018]

12. The Colonel's Bequest [PC/GOG] [Together Retro - 03/2018]


The Colonel's Bequest wears its murder mystery inspirations on its sleeve. This is a 'murder mystery in a mansion' that plays it fairly straight as an homage to the works of Agatha Christie most prominently. The heroine detective, the time period, and the menagerie of possible suspects are all very reminiscent of the trappings you might find in a Christie novel. I also detected some Nancy Drew DNA running through The Colonel's Bequest insofar as the protagonist is a young 'all American girl' out doin' detective stuff. Finally there's a pretty strong Clue (the board game) vibe running through the whole thing. I mean the titular Colonel in The Colonel's Bequest is Colonel Dijon, an obvious riff on the Colonel Mustard character in Clue. I'd go so far as to say that most of the characters in Clue have similar allegories to characters in The Colonel's Bequest. I suppose this makes sense due to the fact that Clue was similarly inspired by an Agatha Christie 'murder mystery in a mansion' framework, but it's slightly problematic in terms of The Colonel's Bequest. It muddies the waters in terms of inspiration and makes the game feel a bit uninspired and dare I say … derivative. It would be like forming a Led Zeppelin cover band in which a large part of the inspiration was drawn from … an earlier Led Zeppelin cover band. If you're looking for a thought provoking or even subversive take on the classic murder mystery formula, you won't find that here. If you're looking for a fun Sierra styled adventure romp through bog standard genre tropes, you're in luck.



Like most Sierra games from this era, The Colonel's Bequest utilizes a familiar combination of text parser plus point & click interface. The text parser is required for most contextual actions in the game as well as all conversational dialogue, but the mouse can be used for navigation and cursory inspection of most objects. I'll be honest, text parser games live or die based on the sophistication of the parser itself. An overly strict parser rapidly devolves into a meta-game of searching for the exact necessary wording to carry out your desired actions. Luckily The Colonel's Bequest is fairly lenient in this regard. I did encounter a couple of situations in which the parser suddenly wanted more precise wording (i.e. 'put key in control' worked whereas 'use key on control' did not), but for the most part those situations were notable only for their infrequency.



I've made mention of the characters being slightly derivative, but it's worth pointing out the ways in which they make the game unique. Based on my experience I'd say that The Colonel's Bequest contains more dialogue than the large majority of the Sierra library. Exploring a myriad of conversational choices with each character often reveals interesting interrelations between characters. I suspect that many of these conversations are merely decorative in terms end-game completion percentage, but they definitely add a richness of texture to the plot and characterization. Roberta Williams has always had a knack for well written flavor text, and The Colonel's Bequest is no exception in this regard.



Despite some interesting ways in which The Colonel's Bequest differentiates itself from other games in the Sierra playbook, there were only a few moments in which I felt like it captured the same magic as other widely heralded Sierra classics. Its use of secret passages as a means of spying on other characters in the house is rather inspired, and although the puzzles are somewhat scarce they're still quite satisfying. Still ... I'm not sure that The Colonel's Bequest ever quite rises to the high water mark found in the best of the Quest for Glory or King's Quest series. All the same, a middling Sierra game means that it's still better than most adventure games from this time period. I'd definitely recommend The Colonel's Bequest for murder mystery buffs or players seeking to explore the entirety of the Sierra catalog. Apprentice adventure gamers might be better advised exploring the classics before investigating the darkened corners of the Colonel's estate.

[Exhuminator]

I'd definitely recommend The Colonel's Bequest for murder mystery buffs or players seeking to explore the entirety of the Sierra catalog.

Awesome job beating that one. It's a mark of shame on my own "Sierra classics I still need to beat" list. I absolutely adore the graphics in Colonel's Bequest, that's about as good as EGA can get.

-

I want to ask that anyone having beaten a game for ELN, also make mention of it in the ELN thread, and not just here. I plan to create a participation list for when the thread is over, and I'd hate to miss anybody's hard work.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2018 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017
* indicates a repeat

1. Tyranny (PC)
2. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (PC)
3. SUPERHOT (PC)
4. Hotline Miami (PC)*
5. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PC)
6. Mario X Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch)
7. Nine Parchments (Switch)
8. X-com: UFO Defense (PC)
9. Chocobo Racing (PS1)
10. Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak (GBA)
11. Dragon Quest Builders (PS4)
12. Dragon Quest (3DS)

13. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below (PS4)

Dragon Quest Heroes is part of the Musou (aka Warriors) series spin-off family of games with things like Hyrule Warriors and Dynasty Warriors Gundam, two games I very much enjoyed. I also quite like me some Dragon Quest, so I thought that this would be a perfect fit for me. While I wasn't exactly wrong, I will preface this review by saying that this is certainly nothing terribly special. If you aren't already a fan of the Musou games, this isn't gonna make you a believer.

On the good side, you have a level of presentation up there with its sister spin-off game of around the same time: Hyrule Warriors. You have an original cast of 4 fighters backed up by a collection of 9 fan favorites(?) from across Dragon Quests 4, 5, 6, and 8:

Four from DQ4: Alena, Kyril, Maya, and Psaro (the final boss of that game)
Two from DQ5: Nera and Bianca
One from DQ6: Terry
Two from DQ8: Yangus and Jessica

While most of the selection is very understandable, I put the '?' there because I genuinely had to look up who the guy they had from DQ6 was, and that's a game in the series I've beaten, while I knew immediately who the members from DQ8 were, and that's a game I've played maybe two hours of total. They're beautifully rendered in 3D though, and while the voice acting on them ranges from pretty good to noticeably bad, the English dub is totally serviceable. The sound track is also excellent, with many tracks from older games, although with how much DQ reuses music, that's more or less to be expected. The game also runs fantastically, and I never encountered a single bug otherwise.

On the bad side are how the characters actually play compared to something like Hyrule Warriors. Compared to Hyrule Warriors that came out four months prior to this, the move trees are seriously lacking in any kind of depth. Where HW has you constantly unlocking new combos and weapons for each character and their different weapons, every character in DQH has a combo tree that is mostly static the entire game. There are some extra bits and bobs you can get through the level-up skill tree, but it's nothing compared to HW's progression system. While they do try and make up for it with a little equipment system and a little crafting, if you look at the comparatively small, unbalanced character pool along with no option for co-op, and it ends up feeling like a noticeably lesser experience.

This is also probably one of the longer Musou games out there. Perhaps it's because I did almost all the side-quests, but those don't really add up to too much outside of the normal gameplay until right before the last chapter (where I spent like 8 hours doing them), as most of them are just collecting a certain amount of ingredients or killing a certain number of monsters. However, most of the "kill X number of monsters" quests ARE given after those monsters have more or less disappeared from your main-story quests, so those do add up to a fair bit of time wasting. On top of that, all of the non-story mission quests take place in the story-mode maps, so it really doesn't feel like anything that different anyways. I racked up a little over 30 hours on this game, but I certainly can't say that I was absolutely enjoying all of it.

Even for Dragon Quest, the story is really nothing special. Even just doing story missions, the game is going to take you at least 20 hours to beat (judging from HLTB), and the story is just so trite and predictable that it never grabbed me at all. You may say this is to be expected of a cross-over game, but I quite enjoyed the Hyrule Warriors and Gundam Warriors plots in comparison to this, if for any reason just because they were so much shorter. Omega Force has just not come up with the mission variety to make this series that compelling for so long, and no amount of new spell-casting or equipment systems can hide that. They really should have done something like Dynasty Warriors 8 (which came out 2 years earlier) where certain characters are required for certain missions to freshen up the combat a little bit, because with how few characters there are, combat starts to feel old REALLY fast. Even Hyrule Warriors acknowledged that staleness and drip-fed the new characters to you far better as well as encouraging you to play certain missions as different characters to earn them heart containers.

This is all on top of how DQH also has the very modern Omega-Force problem of a really inconsistent difficulty curve. Due to the certain enemy make-up and/or contours of a particular level, it may be vastly harder compared to ones around the same time, and this is especially true for side-quest missions. The other common Omega-Force problem this game has is fucking god-awful menu systems and UI. For all the hand-holding the tutorial does, it NEVER tells you how to level up, which is buried in the "Misc." part of your pause menu as "Allocate Skill Points". I went for like 8 or 10 hours at effectively level 1 just because I figured I hadn't unlocked the ability to level up yet, as I was so sure the game would tell me how given the precedent of instruction it had set so far.

Verdict: Not Recommended. As much as it pains me to say, this game just really not worth the price. With a sequel that, from what I hear, is much better (despite not having co-op) also on PS4 for a similar price, the far superior Hyrule Warriors in the same console era across (almost) three systems in counting, not to mention Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Complete Edition which is also on PS4 (and has co-op), there is no shortage of far better Musou games or even Dragon Quest Musou games to occupy your time with. This probably isn't a game you'll hate, but it's probably one you won't end up finishing (even for a Musou game).

[MrPopo]

The DQ6 guy was also the protagonist of DQ Monsters, so that's probably why he was the one chosen.

[PartridgeSenpai]

The DQ6 guy was also the protagonist of DQ Monsters, so that's probably why he was the one chosen.

That was the only conclusion I could come to
I'm pretty sure I had a fairly well-laid team by that point in the game, so I never actually used him because you get him so far into DQ6. But why not someone far more iconic of DQ6 like Carver? I mean, he's in DQH2, so I guess the guys at Squenix must've come to the same conclusion :lo:

[Sarge]

29) Trip World (GB) (7.0) (3/13) (0.5 hours)

Trip World is down for the count. It's a neat little game. It reminds me of Kirby's Dream Land in its brevity, coupled with a few obtuse mechanics much like Mr. Gimmick. Most of the game is pretty toothless, but some of the bosses can get you until you learn the patterns. The last run in particular was a bit of a pain. The first two that swarm you are irritating, but really not too big a deal. The second little dive kicking dude is a major pain. Figured out the best course of action was to get against a wall and just pop him there. A well-timed kick will also get him when he slides.

The last boss is going to depend on two things: your life when you get there, and RNG. The former isn't important if you get good luck on the latter. He can swipe at you with some claws, or he can fire a homing shot at you. You don't want the latter. I tried that battle a few times (yes, I save stated), and you can either tank him with full life (or near to it) if you get bad RNG, or you can just keep jump-kicking him in the face and dodge the claw repeatedly if you get good RNG.

I liked it a lot, and it probably does fall into the "hidden gem" category. It's just too short and too expensive! Thank goodness for emulation.

[alienjesus]

29) Trip World (GB) (7.0) (3/13) (0.5 hours)

Trip World is down for the count. It's a neat little game. It reminds me of Kirby's Dream Land in its brevity, coupled with a few obtuse mechanics much like Mr. Gimmick. Most of the game is pretty toothless, but some of the bosses can get you until you learn the patterns. The last run in particular was a bit of a pain. The first two that swarm you are irritating, but really not too big a deal. The second little dive kicking dude is a major pain. Figured out the best course of action was to get against a wall and just pop him there. A well-timed kick will also get him when he slides.

The last boss is going to depend on two things: your life when you get there, and RNG. The former isn't important if you get good luck on the latter. He can swipe at you with some claws, or he can fire a homing shot at you. You don't want the latter. I tried that battle a few times (yes, I save stated), and you can either tank him with full life (or near to it) if you get bad RNG, or you can just keep jump-kicking him in the face and dodge the claw repeatedly if you get good RNG.

I liked it a lot, and it probably does fall into the "hidden gem" category. It's just too short and too expensive! Thank goodness for emulation.

Did you find the secret hadouken throwing transformation in stage 4? That one is super weird but awesome.

[Sarge]

29) Trip World (GB) (7.0) (3/13) (0.5 hours)

Trip World is down for the count. It's a neat little game. It reminds me of Kirby's Dream Land in its brevity, coupled with a few obtuse mechanics much like Mr. Gimmick. Most of the game is pretty toothless, but some of the bosses can get you until you learn the patterns. The last run in particular was a bit of a pain. The first two that swarm you are irritating, but really not too big a deal. The second little dive kicking dude is a major pain. Figured out the best course of action was to get against a wall and just pop him there. A well-timed kick will also get him when he slides.

The last boss is going to depend on two things: your life when you get there, and RNG. The former isn't important if you get good luck on the latter. He can swipe at you with some claws, or he can fire a homing shot at you. You don't want the latter. I tried that battle a few times (yes, I save stated), and you can either tank him with full life (or near to it) if you get bad RNG, or you can just keep jump-kicking him in the face and dodge the claw repeatedly if you get good RNG.

I liked it a lot, and it probably does fall into the "hidden gem" category. It's just too short and too expensive! Thank goodness for emulation.

Did you find the secret hadouken throwing transformation in stage 4? That one is super weird but awesome.

Wait, what? I think that answers the question of whether I found it...

I do love that upon death, you explode, Mega Man-style. It even sounds like when he bites it!

[alienjesus]

Did you find the secret hadouken throwing transformation in stage 4? That one is super weird but awesome.

Wait, what? I think that answers the question of whether I found it...

I do love that upon death, you explode, Mega Man-style. It even sounds like when he bites it![/quote]

So towards the end of section 4 there is a section where you get the mouse transformation with the extendable tail. The there's a section where you drop down a few screens - but if you push towards the right hand side as you fall there's a section you can fall into that gives you another power up. This would normally just give you another mouse transformation, but if you're still in the mouse form when you grab it, you grow a long pair of legs and pressing B throws fireballs. They 1 hit kill everything - including the stage 4 boss.